So a few months ago Blogger changed the way the picture upload works. And ever since then my pictures have been uploading in reverse order. Sometimes they still upload in the right order, but most of the time they go up in the wrong order.
This is one of those times.
Normally I manually switch them. I was going to do that this time, but there's like 80 pictures . . . and I'm already late writing this post . . . so we are going to try something different here.
I'm going to do this post in reverse order.
Actually this is kind of fitting. Brandon and I watched Tenet for my birthday and that movie has things that travel backwards through time in that movie. So this is my Tenet style blog post.
Saturday February 13th
In the late afternoon on Saturday I realized I was bored. It was a snowy day and we didn't have much going on. I decided it was a good time to get out a puzzle. The puzzle was a good idea in that it kept me busy that evening. Charlotte sat down and helped with a lot of it and it was fun to work with her. But it was a bad idea in that it was a super hard puzzle. We didn't finish it until Wednesday night. And that's one reason this blog post is so late.
Since Valentines Day was on a Sunday we celebrated on Saturday. It's been a while since we went on a proper date so we wanted to make sure we got a way from the kids and the house for a little while. The kids are old enough now that we can leave them home to babysit themselves for short amounts of time. We told them they'd each get a dollar if they didn't fight while we were gone.
Our date wasn't fancy, but honestly fancy didn't matter. It was just nice to be on our own. Our first stop was Les Schwab Tires. The Honda needed it's tires rotated. Normally I drop it off and wait around, but this time Brandon drove the Jeep and so we were able to drop off the jeep and run other errands while it was getting worked on.
We drove to A&W for lunch. Like I said, we are not fancy. A&W has been one of our favorite places to eat for nearly our whole marriage. But we haven't been to the one here in Twin Falls yet. It was so yummy.
Okay now here's our first reverse order picture. This is from Saturday morning. We had a decent sized snow storm on Friday night and woke up to snow. Lydia and Veronica playing in it for a long time in the front yard. (The backyard was a mine field of dog poop hidden under the snow, so they didn't dare play back there.)
Charlotte spent a lot of time playing with her Barbies in the house. Here are all her Barbies at a family reunion. She told me who are the grandparents, who is married together. Who their kids are. Etc.
Here are the family's before they went to bed.
Friday February 12
Everyone gets a balloon for Valentines Day. Here are all the other balloons tied around Marcia's collar.
Charlotte got a tattoo of a spider.
Here's Charlotte eating Valentines Day treats.
Brandon was feeling a little left out because we did our Valentines Day Party while he was at work. I put together a bunch of goodies and took them to him at work along with a balloon and a box of homemade oreo truffles. He was so excited!
Derrick had been obsessed with Treasure Hunts so I made a quick treasure for the kids to find. It had conversation hearts and pez candy as the treasure. Here are the kids opening it.
The treasure was hidden in the back yard. Here are the kids following the map to find it.
Another part of the party was getting Valentines from cousins. Here's Derrick's pile of Valentines. Every year he takes the time to look carefully at each and every Valentine he receives. It's adorable.
The Valentines weren't the only thing we did with cousins. We also did a Cousin Valentines Day Party over Zoom. My sister Lindsey came up with a Kahoot Game and also did Bingo. It was super fun for all the cousins to get together.
Here's a picture I took of the screen. There were 5 cousins in North Carolina, 3 in Texas, and 3 in Utah. This took the place of a classroom Valentines Day Party.
Here's Veronica eating her treats.
Derrick looking over the snack table.
Charlotte posing with the Valentines Day boxes.
When my sister Emily mailed the Valentines from her kids she included something - or rather someone - special. Charlotte's horse Selena had accidently gone home with Emily's family after they visited us last July. It was finally time for her to come back home to Charlotte. Charlotte was very happy to open the box and see her horse. Charlotte's stuffed animals have traveled more than some people.
Here are the kids posing with their new stuffed animals. Last year they got big Dalmatian dogs. So this year they asked for Dalmatian puppies. I found some cute ones with heart shaped spots at Walmart. The kids were excited to get them, but not quite as excited as I expected. (You'll know why when we get to days earlier in the week.)
Every year I surprise the kids with the Valentines Day party when they are done with school. They know the party is coming, but they are never sure of the day. It's always so fun to have them walk in the door and see our pretty Valentine's Day table. But this year it was a little harder to surprise them.
I had everything for the party hidden in the basement while we finished up school stuff for the week. When we were done I told the kids, "The cousin party starts in one hour, but our living room is too messy for the party. Will you guys run upstairs and put away the toys that are on the floor?" They all ran up there to start cleaning (which was kind of a miracle, I'd expected whining from at least one or two kids.) While they were upstairs I hurried to set up the card table and throw all the Valentine's things onto it. Then I went upstairs and told the kids, "Okay the living room looks great, we still have time before the party, let's get the basement clean so we don't have to worry about it later. They went downstairs (a little less enthusiastically) and were surprised to see the table set up.
I was so happy that I'd still been able to pull off the surprise.
When we were doing school Veronica had to write a friendly letter. She chose to write to my mom. Veronica doesn't like to write so I just had her tell me what she wanted to say. When we were done we took a picture of it and just texted it to my mom. I knew I wouldn't have time to get it into the mail.
Brandon did school with the kids first in the morning. While he was going over Science things with them I was upstairs taking care of last minute things for the Valentines Day party. I put candy into pretty dishes and found the Dalmatian stuffies where I'd stashed them. I also put together a treasure hunt for Derrick. I thought about doing an elaborate hunt with lots of clues. But I've learned it's best to start out simple and then ramp up from there if needed. So I just drew a simple map of our backyard with a dotted line showing the path the kids should follow. Then I hit the "treasure" in the garden shed so it wouldn't get wet in the rain that was falling.
Thursday February 11th
While I was working on the truffles the girls were on a Zoom call for the Girls Activity for church. Veronica turns 8 this year which means she is old enough to participate in the Girls Activities with Charlotte and Lydia. So all three girls were crowded around my laptop.
During school Veronica sorted out our base ten cubes by color. She loves sorting.
Lydia finished her Valentine's Day box while I was working with Derrick and Veronica on school stuff.
Here's Veronica being crafty with paper.
I read to the kids for a long time at the start of school on Wednesday. Charlotte and Lydia worked on their unicorns.
Here are the boxes when they were still unpainted along with Veronica's lama which had been finished earlier in the week.
The girls had put them together while I was at work. I was so impressed when I came home and saw them.
Tuesday February 9th.
The kids also played with Marcia in funny ways.
Here's another picture of the lama.
They girls built the Lama while I was at work, and they painted it while I read to them during school.
I'm going to change the order of some pictures for just a minute because the joke works better this way. Here's the wolf family that we've had for a few years. Jack is Charlotte's wolf from Yellowstone. He is married Wolfea who is Lydia's yellowstone wolf. They have two wolf pups. (I can't remember their names.)
Well on Monday the wolf population in our family exploded!
The kids were ecstatic.
Here they are posing with each of the pups. (You can see the open plastic mailers on the couch.)
And here is Rose in a little sleeper that Lydia and sewed.
Sunday February 7th
Here's all the food.
It seems like every Sunday morning for the past few weeks I slept in super late. Like we are talking getting out of bed at like 10:00 or 11:00. So Brandon and the kids were counting on me being in bed a long time. But what none of us factored into that thinking was that I didn't have a super busy week at work or with homeschool. I didn't have to spend all weekend recovering from the week. So instead of laying in bed after everyone else woke up, I got up too. The kids and Brandon all seemed to be thinking, "Um what is she doing out here, this is not going according to plan." Finally Brandon sent me back into my room.
I loved the couch covers I bought for our little chairs so I wanted to buy one for our big couch. I bought a jersey knit cover this time. I thought it would be easier to work with. But its actually kind of harder than the other ones. But when its all in place it actually looks pretty good.
It took a lot of cleaning to get the couch ready. So many things have fallen through the cushions in just a few months since the last time we cleaned it out. We had to vacuum the mattress inside the couch bed and then take that off and clean under the couch. I think one of the things I'll like most about the cover is that it won't let as much stuff fall through. Now we wont have to worry about losing the remote as often.
Here's the before picture.
Friday February 5th
Thursday February 4th
And these are farm animals made from our base ten cubes.
This is a fun thing the girls made with one of their Tinker Crates.
Monday February 1st
Monday was also the start of a new schedule for me at work. Actually it's the same schedule, but instead of being in charge of reception in addition to everything else I need to do I had a receptionist working at the same time as me. This is a complete game changer. Instead of feeling completely overwhelmed by the phone I felt like I could actually get things done. This change made my work life balance feel so much more balanced.
Okay, now we are going back in time to Friday - starting with Friday night.
Brandon and I decided to try out Wanda Vision. We'd both seen trailers for the show, but the trailers seemed super weird. And I was feeling kind of done with Marvel. Also I just never cared that much about Wanda or Vision. Ever since they appeared in Age of Ultron I'd felt like they were B characters and was always surprised when they showed up in later movies.
So a TV show focusing on Wanda and Vision just seemed like bottom of the barrel stuff.
But the show came out and I started reading some reviews of it. And it seemed to be actually good. I liked the concept of having each episode take place in a sitcom setting from a different decade.
I figured we'd watch the whole show when all the episodes were out. That's what we'd done with the Mandalorian and it had been fine.
And then I started seeing spoilers for some of the later episodes. And I realized I needed to get caught up right away before anything else got spoiled.
So Brandon and I started the first episode. We were delighted by the show. I think I was hooked by the first joke. We watched all 6 of the episodes that were out. And it was so wonderful. I can't believe how solid the show is. Like the decade hopping idea would be great on its own, but to add super heroes to the mix just makes it amazing.
Also I'm super impressed by the cast. Kathryn Hahn as Agnes is so so so great. I've loved her in other things she's done like The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Spiderverse, and Parks and Recreation. So honestly she was the first reason I was interested in this show. Paul Bettany is talented and has always nailed Vision as a dramatic character, but he was excellent at making him comedic too. But it's Elizabeth Olsen who is really shining in this show. It's been so fun to watch her absolutely nail playing a women on TV in each decade. I didn't know she was so talented.
Long story short, we are hooked on Wanda Vision
The other big even on Friday was our family Valentines Day Celebration. I love spoiling the kids on Valentines Day. I like it almost more than Christmas.
Here's Derrick with his Shark Balloon.
I was still able to do it though.
Thursday had been a busy day. All day I'd been hoping to find time to finish making oreo truffles I'd started the day before. I ended up with a window of time before making dinner. I was able to melt down white chocolate and almond bark so that I could roll the oreo centers in the coating. They truffles turned out super cute. I put them inside candy boxes that I'd saved from last year. We ended up eating one box at the Valentines Day Party. One went to Brandon at work. And we ate the last one on Valentines Day.
The leaders had had the girls fill out little questionnaires about themselves. They were reading the answers and the girls had to guess who it was about.
Veronica's answers had been hilarious when I'd helped her fill hers out. There was a whole section on favorites. Favorite TV show, Favorite Movie, Favorite Food, Favorite Candy, etc. Veronica answered "everything except ______" to just about every question. So favorite food was, "Everything except 7 layer did." Candy was "Everything except Zombie Skittles." Movie was "Everything except romance movies." Here list of favorite things, was really a list of things she didn't like. It was really funny.
We'd barely made it back home in time for the zoom call. We'd been out in Buhl for horseback riding lessons. These had been cancelled a few times because of weather, but the weather on Thursday was actually almost warm.
Our first lessons had been a group lesson. But now we were doing 30 minute individual lessons. This week was Charlotte and Lydia's turn.
Lydia went second. Derrick, Veronica, and I waited in the car. I took this picture at the very end of her lesson.
Here's Charlotte on the horse.
Here are the rest of us waiting. (This is before we realized the car was warmer and had fun buttons to push while we were waiting.)
Charlotte and Lydia had spent quite a bit of time working on Valentines Boxes. We spent some time taking pictures with their creations. Here's Veronica with he Lama.
Lydia with a Rainbow Unicorn.
Charlotte with her Rainbow Unicorn.
Another angle so you can see the eyes and mane.
All four boxes together.
The girls had absolutely no help with these. I'm super impressed by their talents.
The white unicorn had been the final one completed.
Wednesday February 10th
Normally we run errands on Thursday but I knew that we'd be too busy on Thursday to do that. So we ran errands on Wednesday. One of the places we went was Joann's so Veronica could buy a Paw Patrol stuffie she'd seen there the last time we went to Joann's. I think I took this picture by accident when I pulled out my phone to find a Joann's coupon. But it's a decent picture of the stuffed animal.
I had rehearsal with the Magic Valley Symphony on Tuesday night. We were back to meeting on the stage at CSI. I wasn't feeling great about the upcoming concert. We were playing a terribly complicated Gershwin Piece that was far outside my skill limits. We were playing in about 4 different key signatures that I had never played in before. I was literally going through my music and writing in the name of every single note and whether it was sharp or flat.
I'd made up my mind that I was just going to sit out the Gershwin. It was 35 minutes long and I just couldn't see myself able to do it. I'd spent all my time learning the Beethoven piece and just be proud of that. But when I talked to my section leader about it he told me that I should still try the Gershwin. Our second chair bass player had COVID so it was just going to to be me and the section leader. He said I was doing well enough on the "easy" part and I wouldn't be the first bass player to fake their way through the harder parts.
I told him I'd try.
I also told him I wasn't going to be able to make it on the 16th because I had a work meeting. He joked, "Oh are you getting COVID too." I said, "Actually I'm getting my second vaccine dose that day too so I might have some bad COVID symptoms by then."
We had a good laugh about that.
Derrick had speech therapy on Tuesday afternoon. I've discovered that instead of waiting in the waiting room or in my car, I can walk around outside the office building during his appointment. I turn on a podcast of Baconsale and just walk in big circles around the building. I'm sure the staff inside all the suites and super confused about seeing me go past every 3 minutes for 45 minutes. But it's a nice way to get some exercise in.
At home Veronica's lama Valentine box got overrun with puppies.
Monday February 8th
You, along with Jack, may be wondering how this happened. Well here's the story.
When the onsite part of Venture School was cancelled last November, everyone was switched to Subscription boxes. Veronica picked a Zoo Crate for her subscription box. She was mailed a book about Polar Bears and a Polar Bear Stuffed Animal. Suddenly EVERYONE in the family wanted a Zoo crate. So when December's onsite classes were cancelled too all four of my kids ordered a Zoo Crate. It was supposed to be a Sea Turtle.
But the Zoo Crate with the Sea Turtle never showed up. I'm not sure if it didn't get ordered, or if supply just completely didn't meet demand.
In January we decided to not do onsite school and so the kids were able to pick subscription boxes again. And again they all wanted Zoo Crates. But again, the January ones didn't show up. I decided Zoo Crates were a bust and switched everyone to Tinker and Kiwi Crates for the rest of the school year. Our February Tinker/Kiwi Crates showed up pretty quickly.
I'm not sure if Zoo Crates finally worked though a backlog, or if someone with Venture School resubmitted our order, but all of a sudden we got 8 Zoo Crates delivered to our house on Monday the 8th of February. And every single one had a wolf pup inside.
When I got home from work on Monday I was greeted by this Megalodon Valentines Day box. The girls had built it on Sunday, but painted it on Monday. I was super impressed by the gold teeth.
Hey look, we made it to my birthday. I think I usually finish talking about my birthday with a paragraph or two about how I feel about being one year older.
This year I am 36. Last year I kept obsessing about the fact that it had been 20 years since I was 15 years old. That math problem STILL doesn't seem right.
This year my new obsession is that it's been 4 years since we lived in Yellowstone and that I was only 32 years old when I decided to apply for a job in Yellowstone. At the time I'd felt rather old, but now 32 seems young. I'm so proud of my 32 year old self for taking that risk and going to Yellowstone. It was crazy, but it was absolutely the best thing I could have done.
So on my birthday I found myself thinking about what decisions I could make now that would make my older-self happy. What decision could I make at 36 that I would be proud of at 46?
Brandon and I went on a walk that night and I told him an idea I'd been kicking around for several weeks. I wanted to go back to school to get a second bachelors/and or a masters in Accounting.
I've always said I would NEVER go back to school. By the time I earned my Bachelors in Economics in 2007 I was completely done with school. Actually I'd been completely done with school in 2006 when I'd realized that if I dropped by minor and changed my degree from Managerial Economics to Pre-law Economics I could be done with school in 3 easy semesters rather than 4 or 5 hard ones.
I was just so done with the idea of paying professors to be mean to me. I didn't like having 4 or 5 professors who thought they were the most important thing in my life. I was sick of balancing papers, and tests, and homework. I just wanted to get out of school and start working. I reasoned that even if I had the worst boss in the world they'd at least be paying me rather than the other way around.
But a few months ago a friend from high school posted on Facebook that she had earned her Bachelors and Masters degrees in Accounting from Western Governors University. I instantly felt so much jealously. I consider this girl a friend, but there were many times I also considered her a rival. So it's probably not too surprising that I'd feel jealous of her. I literally thought, "She can't major in Accounting! That's MY thing!"
And then I puzzled over what that reaction meant. I've learned from Jennifer Fulwiller that often a jealous feeling is ourselves telling us that this is something we should be doing. Did the fact that I felt so jealous about a friend getting a Masters in Accounting mean that I thought I should get a Masters in Accounting?
I realized the answer was yes.
And the more I thought about it the more it made sense. In the last 4 years every job I've had has had accounting elements to it. Mostly they've revolved around the daily deposit, and accounts receivable/payable. These are things you don't really need an accounting degree to do. And I've been perfectly happy doing them. But if I love these things, then it makes sense that I would love more higher level accounting things.
Another thing Jennifer Fulwiller talks about it to really examine what you loved to do as a child. What did you spend your free time doing. Well I loved to sort things. I can't tell you how many times I alphabetized our books. It's not because I was OCD, it's because I just loved putting things into order.
When I was 12 we did a little business course as part of the TLC class. I barely remember that class, but I do remember that it planted the idea that I would be good at accounting into my mind. I knew about the Academy of Finance at my High School and thought about doing that my Jr and Sr Years. I ended up not having room in my schedule for the Academy of Finance, but I've always wondered what I could have done if I'd taken those classes.
I was happy majoring in economics and I've been happy with every job I've had in my career. And now it seemed like the next step was to get another degree in Accounting.
In the short term this didn't make a lot of sense. I'm perfectly happy at my current job. I could see myself staying there for a long time and being happy the whole time. But when I take a long run look at my life I can see that going back to school now makes a lot of sense. There may come a point where I feel like I've outgrown my current job. Or there may come a time when Brandon doesn't want to work full time, but I do. (Honestly this one isn't too far fetched, Brandon has said he'll quit if his boss ever sells the company.) Or maybe we'll move and I wish I had more job options. And really even if I never leave my current company it wouldn't hurt to have more accounting knowledge. My boss is brilliant, but he'll be the first to tell you that Marriage and Family Therapists are never taught how to run a business.
So after talking about all of this with Brandon I decided to go forward with the idea to go back to school. I filled out an application with Western Governors University that night. My sister Hillary's husband had received his Masters of Accounting through them so I knew it was a legit option for an online accounting degree. On Monday I spoke with an admissions advisor. I ordered my transcripts to be sent to WGU. This week I got the transcript evaluation back. A lot of stuff transferred from my Economics degree, but there are still a lot of classes I need to take for a bachelors in Accounting. I really like the format of WGU though because it will help me get through some of the easier classes pretty fast. Right now I'm thinking of starting school in June so I can get through the easy classes while the kids are home and start the harder ones when they go back to school in the fall.
And I really think this is something that when I'm 46 I'll look back and say, "Wow, I'm so proud of my 36 year old self for doing that. That was really smart."
Okay let's talk about what I did on my birthday. Remember we are still doing this in reverse order because that's how the pictures uploaded.
We finished off the evening of my birthday with rootbeer floats. These were so yummy.
For dinner we had 7 layer dip.
After church we opened presents. I got a lot of great gifts, books, gum, new sewing scissors, but the very best gift was my new laptop. This wasn't exactly a birthday present. We'd ordered it with stimulus money at the beginning of January, but it showed up in time for my birthday so we said that it was a birthday present. My old laptop was almost 7 years old so it's been time for an upgrade for a while.
Everything was wrapped in really pretty paper that Charlotte and Lydia had picked out. I said I wanted it framed so later Charlotte took a piece and made a cardboard frame for it. We have it hanging in our hall and I love it!
Veronica made me "matches" from que tips that she pulled the fuzz off of. She was very proud of this gift.
I'd been a little ambivalent about whether I wanted a cake or not. I told Brandon I really just wanted the rootbeer floats. But the kids were a little shocked about that. So Brandon made cupcakes to keep the kids happy. He used a new frosting kit that I bought him for Christmas and the frosting turned out super cute.
Church was excellent. This was the first week that the whole ward was able to attend church together. We still had to sit every other row and wear masks. And after sacrament meeting we had Relief Society. It was held in the chapel and only lasted 20 minutes, but oh my goodness it was so nice to sit in a room with other women. I kept saying, "I got Relief Society for my birthday!"
I spent the morning lounging around in my pajamas. It's been a while since I had a birthday on a weekend so I was definitely taking advantage of the fact that I didn't have to get ready first thing in the morning.
Brandon made breakfast for everyone. It was super yummy.
When I came back out I discovered that the kids had decorated the living room with Crete paper. They had steamers on the door.
And a big banner in the living room. Brandon had helped with the H and the A, and Charlotte and Lydia did the rest.
They also had my presents nicely wrapped and waiting on my desk. (That monitor is a present too because I'd been asking to have a second monitor with my computer.)
Saturday February 6
Brandon and I stayed up watching Tenet as a pre-birthday activity. The Baconsale boys had talked a lot about this movie and I was excited to see it. So I told Brandon it's what I wanted to watch for my birthday. I picked it up at Red box and we watched it together.
Its a Christopher Nolan movie which means it's complicated anyway, but wow this one was a thinker. At one point I turned to Brandon and said, "I have NO IDEA what is going on." He agreed. When it was over I said, "Remember when we thought Inception was a complicated movie." Brandon said, "No Inception feels like Kindergarten." But even though it was a super complicated movie, and I'm still not entirely sure what happened, I really liked the movie. It was very well done and I've thought about it a lot. (And I'm using the moving backward through time concept to cover up a weird blog glitch so that is definitely worth something.)
Derrick was having a rough day where nothing really made him happy. But then his Kiwi Crate showed up in the mail. It was a kit for making a treasure chest. This changed his whole day around. He and I put the chest together. He loved following the directions. Then he and Veronica spent a long time "Playing Treasure Hunt" They'd hide the chest and then "follow" a map to find it.
After dinner Derrick wanted to watch The Meg with me. He'd been really into Sharks lately and had somehow found clips of the movie on Youtube. He wanted to watch the whole movie. So we'd ordered it from the library and Brandon had watched it on Thursday night after I was in bed to see if there were any scenes we were going to have to skip. He told me it ended up being a super predictable movie and he wasn't worried about the violence. He said, "Pacific Rim is more violent then this movie."
None of the girls wanted to watch it because they thought it would be too scary. So just Derrick and I watched it together. Derrick snuggled up with me and we had a good time watching the movie together. Brandon was right, it wasn't scary. At the end when it was probably the most scariest Charlotte, Lydia, and Veronica all showed up to watch it. I was like, "what are you guys doing here now? I thought you were scared of it. This is the scariest part." They were not scared.
We spent the afternoon getting Valentines Day Cards ready to send to cousins. We send them to all the cousins on my side and the younger cousins on Brandon's side. We probably spent so much more money on postage than the Valentine's were worth, but it was so fun to have something to send. I never really get my life together enough in December to send other families Christmas Presents, but Valentine's Day is a whole other story. I think I might always plan to send something fun in February.
On Friday morning I went to the County DMV to renew my Driver's License. I almost missed doing this before my birthday. When I got my Idaho Driver's License back when we moved to Idaho in the Fall of 2017 I paid for a 4 year license. I assumed it was good for 4 years from the date I got it. Which would be sometime in September of 2021. So when I got a postcard reminding me to renew my driver's license I thought, "wow, they are sending this early."
Two weeks later it dawned on me that maybe my license expired on my birthday.
I checked it and yes it expired on February 7, 2021. I could have renewed it online, but I knew I needed to get a Star Card thingy so I could use the driver's license if I wanted to fly in an airplane. So I needed to go into the DMV and bring in a bunch of documents. The only morning I had free to do that was the Friday before my birthday.
I didn't want to end up waiting in line forever so I went right after the office opened at 8:00. I didn't have to wait in line at all. I gave the guy my documents, had my picture taken, paid the fee, and was out of there within like 20 minutes. Easy peasy. And guess what? I was able to renew my license for 8 years. That had been an option when I first got the license, but I hadn't been willing to commit to living in Idaho that long - remember I'd spent the last year living in 4 different states. But this time it was a no brainer to say I wanted an 8 year license. I have no plans to leave Idaho any time soon.
This is the day I finished the 4th Stormlight Book. All 1200+ pages. It was an excellent book and definitely worth the time, but I think Brandon was happy to have his wife back. When I was done with the book I was like, "Hey, Remember me! We used to hang out!"
I don't remember anything else about Wednesday. (I was probably reading.)
Here's a picture of Lydia with an outfit she made for one of her barbies.
Tuesday February 2nd
In the evening I had rehearsal and in the afternoon Derrick had therapy. But I don't remember anything specific about either of those.
The big news on Tuesday was that I had a doctors appointment. I wanted to get my thyroid checked because I'd been worried about it for a while. I've had trouble with my weight the past year or so. And while some of it could be explained by quarantine eating some of it also seemed a bit unexplainable. Plus my periods were strange (even for for me), my hair seemed to be thinning, and I was still inexplicable tired a lot.
Most worrisome was that my mom had thyroid cancer when she was 40 so it wasn't too strange to think that maybe I had something wrong with my thyroid. BIT I put off going to the doctor for a while. I was really worried I'd go in and talk to him and the conversation would go like this:
me: I have all these problems
dr: Well you are overweight, so if you lost weigh you wouldn't have these problems.
me: um, not being able to loose weight is one of my problems.
So I put it off for a while, but ultimately decided I needed to go in and at least get my thyroid checked so I could rule that out.
The doctor's appointment ended up being a huge success for three reasons.
1. The doctor didn't try to counsel me on losing weight.
2. He didn't tell me I needed a pap-smear.
3. He didn't tell me I needed a pregnancy test even though my period is super late.
And he agreed that we needed to test my thyroid. So a lady helped draw my blood for a sample. I thought that would be super easy because up until a year ago I was donating plasma regularly. But all those plasma donations gave me a fair amount of scar tissue. And I'd kind of forgot to drink any water in the past few hours. So she had to do the draw in my wrist. Ugh.
Anyway, two days later I got the results back. My thyroid is nice and normal. So yay that's working. I'm still not sure what's going on with the rest of me. But actually I'm not as concerned as I was when I first made the appointment because taking iron supplements has alleviated a lot of my problems.
Okay, now we have a bunch of pictures of lego creations. This is one of a sunken ship.
Derrick loves Pizza bites and so recently I bought him some Totino's pizzas to see if he liked those. He loved those too. Brandon was supposed to buy more when he went grocery shopping, but he'd forgot. I told Derrick we'd buy some together. On Monday he didn't have therapy so Brandon dropped him off at my office on his way to work. The first thing Derrick said to me was, "Mom, let's go buy pizzas." When I finished work we went to Smiths and bought pizzas and pizza rolls. Then we came home and Derrick wanted to cook and eat them all. This is such a boy picture
I'm so glad I have a boss who is responsive to my needs and who realized I was super close to burning out in January.
And look at that. We made to where the last post ended.
Thanks for reading along with this experiment in linear storytelling. If this blew your brain then maybe you shouldn't try watching Tenet.
Hopefully my next post is back in the right order.
